


In the Foreseeable Future

by Catchclaw



Series: Mental Mimosa [255]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, Enemies to Friends, M/M, Stranded, Survival, Unexpected attraction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-15
Updated: 2019-04-15
Packaged: 2020-01-13 18:33:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18474679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: Steve and his least-favorite pilot crash land on an uncharted world.





	In the Foreseeable Future

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Previously Undiscovered Island. Prompt from this [generator](http://colormayfade.tumblr.com/generator).

“Well,” Tony said, squinting into the bright summer air, “it could be worse.”

They were sitting on a stretch of beach that meandered nearly to the horizon. The sun was high in a lilac sky and the sand was the color of crush lapis and the water beyond was green, iridescent, moving in lazy waves towards the shore. If Steve’s ears hadn’t still been ringing, if he couldn’t still smell the burning wreckage, if he hadn’t seen that trail of blood oozing from the crack in Tony’s head, it might have almost seemed peaceful. Almost.

“Nothing’s trying to eat us,” Steve said. “And nobody’s shooting at us. Is that what you mean?”

Tony turned and gave him a tight, sunny smile. There was a gash on his cheek and he had a hell of a shiner. “What do you know?” he said. “For once, we’re on the same page, Cap.”

And then he fainted.

 

***

 

The planet they were stranded on, so far as Steve and the last of the nav computers could tell, wasn’t on any map.

“Of course it’s fucking not,” Tony managed once he woke up. “Otherwise, we wouldn’t have crashed into it.”

Steve rolled his eyes and waved the raggedy holo away. “My point being,” he said, “that even if we could send a signal back to Earth, we have no way of telling them where to look.”

“And that’s supposed to make me feel better?”

“No.”

Tony lay back down gingerly, wincing as his head hit the field jacket Steve had reworked as a pillow. “Good. Because your bedside manner sucks.”

Steve stood up too fast; his head caught the top of the tent. “I’m not here to hold your hand, Stark. But I did spent the last three days making sure you didn’t bleed to death.”

“La di fucking da.” Tony closed his eyes. “I’m sure you’ll get a medal for that, too: _saving a comrade in the line of duty_ or some shit.”

“Is that what you think this is about? You think I’m looking for some reward here?” Steve could feel his blood boiling. “I’m just trying to give us a shot at staying alive!”

“Don’t worry,” Tony said, fainter but no less barbed. “The powers that be won’t let their favorite soldier malinger out here too long. The cavalry's coming for you, Steve, every ship in this man’s army. You’ll see.”

Steve stepped out into the night air and breathed in, let it back out. Ten years he’d been in the force, out here sailing around on the front lines, and no one had ever pissed him off as routinely as Tony goddamn Stark. He was a terrific pilot, sure; made every ship he flew, even the creakiest, feel nimble in the spacelanes. His brain was able and sharp. The fellas loved him, too, and so did the ladies; word on the base was that his cot was never cold. He was charming, they said, like the best sort of salesman, but with Steve, from day one, he’d been only a pain in the ass.

He questioned orders, always, even the most basic and routine, peppered Steve with what he believed were much better ideas. When they were alone, just them and the stars, he was a smart ass, sharp and caustic, and Steve to his shame found himself responding in kind. Once, when they couldn’t agree on the best path through an asteroid belt, they’d come real close to settling things with their fists, and days like today, injured or not, Steve would have paid to get back there and give into that instinct, to see what it was like to punch the man square in the jaw.

But now he didn’t have a choice, did he? He couldn’t survive here alone and neither could Tony. They’d have to stick together, somehow, if they were gonna make it. He shook his head, laughed at little at the fucked-up of the universe. Gods help them, they’d find a way.

 

***

 

After a week, Tony was up on his feet again; after two, he was well enough to help Steve with the shelter he was building out of the slim, supple trees that lay an easy reach from the beach.

“We should be building this closer to the water,” he grumbled for the 90th time. “It’s gonna be a bitch running back and forth all the time.”

Steve yanked the freshly cut plank from Tony’s hands and gritted his teeth, stepped back up on the stump he was using a ladder. “Tch. We don’t know how high the tides will come up in the rainy season.”

“If there is one. That’s purely a guess on your part.”

“We’re in a tropical area, Tony. I think that’s a pretty reasonable guess.”

“I didn’t know you were kosher with those, that’s all.”

Steve fought with the plank; it was warped just enough not to want to slide home. “Kosher with--?”

Tony snorted and stretched up, held the wood in place long enough for Steve to drive the first nail home. “Guesses, Cap,” Tony said. “A reach of the imagination. I wasn’t aware they let officers have one of those.”

When Steve looked down, the man was actually smiling, a little curve of the lips between the dark lines of his beard. It was so unexpected, so startling, he found himself grinning back.

“Ah,” Tony said, “nice to see you’ve got one of those, too.”

Later, as they ate roasted fish over a fire, Steve found his eyes drifting to Tony’s mouth, red and wet in the firelight as Tony expounded on his plans for tomorrow, for some elaborate fishing trap he wanted to make.

“I could use your help with the roof,” Steve said when Tony stopped to take a breath. “We work on it together and in another day, it’ll be done.”

Tony shook his head. His dark hair, neatly streaked with gray, was already growing past regulation; freed from its high and tight it was, Steve noticed, sneaking towards curly. “You don’t need my help,” he said. “But you do need to eat. This one fish-at-a-time shit isn’t going to work much longer. We need to start setting up stores in case the weather gets bad.”

“Oh,” Steve said, the word sweet vinegar. “Are you actually admitting I’m right?”

“I said, _in case_. And who knows what bad weather looks like here. It might be a lotta rain. It might be none. You don’t know any more than I do here, Cap.”

“You’re right. I don’t. But I appreciate your willingness to err on the side of what if.”

Tony stood up and stretched, his fading t-shirt pulling up to his ribs, the skin beneath paler than the tanned lines of his arms. “Sir,” he said with a smirk. “Thank you, sir.”

 

***

Once a month had passed, Steve had resigned himself to it: their rescue, if it came, wouldn’t be easy or quick; for the foreseeable future, they were on their own.

He’d also come to terms with the turn in Tony’s behavior, with the slide from constant snark to something slipperier. It wasn’t as if they were friends now, or that they no longer disagreed, but their arguments felt more purposeful, less pointed. It was odd, mostly. But it was also good.

Their shelter was finished. Tony’s fish trap was, too, and he’d moved on to a small dam project that he hoped would put the water they drank from and cooked with closer in reach. They’d stripped every last usable inch of the ship and buried the rest in the forest, in a circle of those slim reddish trees.

“If they have the sensors going and they’re close enough,” Tony said as they rested, makeshift shovels in hand, “they’ll be able to sense the Vibranium through this soil, no problem. It’s not dense enough to make any difference.”

“I know,” Steve said.

He felt Tony’s eyes on him. “I know you know,” Tony said. “I just needed to hear it, that’s all. I’m reassuring myself over here. Not all of us all tall, blond, and stoic, Steve.”

They sat in silence for a moment, the only noise that of the leaves high above them shifting in the warm afternoon breeze.

Steve said, at last: “That’s the first time you’ve ever called me that.”

“What?”

He chuckled. “Steve. Not sir or Captain or Cap.”

“Is it?” Tony tilted his head. “Huh. Would you rather I stick with the formalities?”

“No.” He grinned, watched its twin bloom on Tony’s face. “Steve’s good.”

When the work was done, the last of the ship hidden beneath the soft earth, they ran down to the water and peeled off their clothes, desperate for relief from the heat.

“Oh, gods,” Tony groaned when he was waist deep in the waves. “That feels so fucking good. _Shit_.”

His chest was brown now and so were his shoulders, his back. He moved easily in the water, no trace of the limp from those first days. He looked happy, Steve thought suddenly, more relaxed than Steve had ever seen him; no more attitude, no more artifice, only strength and a smile and a constant echo of contentment. This Tony, the one beside him in the water of an unknown world, he looked like a whole different man.

“What?” Tony said. He’d ducked his head in; his hair was clinging to his neck, glistening.

“Hmmm?”

“You’re staring.” He reached up and rubbed at his face. “There a leech in my beard or something?”

Steve’s face went hot red and he turned away, looked out towards the horizon. “No,” he said, his tongue stumbling. “Nothing like that.”

That night, as Tony slept, Steve blinked at the roof they’d built with their own hands and saw Tony’s face there, dripping with water; the lines of his body sun hot and wet. His fingers itched and it was like before, when he’d dreamt of his fist in Tony’s face. But this time, the thought of his hand on Tony’s face--not punching, touching; a slide of his thumb over Tony’s reddened, damp mouth--made his stomach flutter, made the blood in his body slip between his hips and pool in the stunned swell of his cock. His name in Tony’s mouth: _Steve_ , his tongue on Steve’s fingers, his teeth.

He hadn’t touched himself in weeks, hadn’t dared to; they lived so close, day in and day out, hand and glove. That’s all it was, the only reason he was hard in his shorts. It was hot even with the sun down and the moons out and he was lonely on this beautiful, godsforsaken world. It had nothing to do with Tony.

Steve bit his lip and listened to Tony snore and touched himself, furtive, rolled his hips into his big, shaking hand and when he came, he cupped a hand around the head and whimpered as he felt his spend fill up his palm, grateful that the rich smell of the night-blooming flowers was enough to cover the hot scent of his sex.

“Steve?” Tony’s voice was heavy with sleep. “You all right? Thought I heard something.”

“It’s fine,” Steve said, shaky, still trembling. “It was nothing. Just the, ah. Just the wind in the trees.”

Tony’s mat creaked as he rolled over, the shadows playing over his back. “‘K. Night, Cap.”

“Yeah, Tony.” Steve closed his eyes and scrubbed his hand against his shorts, heat in his head now, a rush of embarrassment. “Good night.”


End file.
